Big spike in Chromebook sales in 2013. Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) cloud platform is seeing huge sales growth, according to retailers and analysts. What does that mean for other laptop platforms? Not great news for Windows, but near-catastrophic news for MacBooks.

Chromebooks had a very good year...and that's bad news for Microsoft. ... Amazon.com called out a pair of Chromebooks [as the] best-selling notebooks during the U.S. holiday season. ... Chromebooks' holiday success...was duplicated elsewhere during the year. ... By NPD's tallies, Chromebooks accounted for 21% of all U.S. commercial notebook sales...and 10% of all computers and tablets. Both shares were up massively from 2012.

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In many ways, Chromebooks are the successors to "netbooks," [which] stormed into the market in 2007, peaked in 2009...then fell by the wayside...as tablets assumed their roles and full-fledged notebooks closed in on netbook prices. MORE

StatCounter does break out Chrome OS separately [but] its share is so low that it gets filed under “Other” in the results they show on the website. [But] they did seem to see a spike in December, going from around 0.04 to 0.1 percent worldwide, and from 0.14 to 0.34 in the United States.

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It’s possible that Chrome OS [will] eventually be a major platform, but...will take a few more quarters of strong sales for it to make a dent. MORE

But Preston Gralla has his own analysis:

Apple notebooks accounted for only 1.8%, compared to 2.6% the year previous. ... Chromebooks [are] taking a hefty chunk of the...market, but with 34.1%...Windows still has a healthy market share. The same can't be said of Mac notebooks. A mere 1.8% market share is vanishingly small, and likely will shrink even further.

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So yes, it's true that Chromebooks are hurting the sales of Windows machines. But Macbooks are even being hurt worse. ... There will always be a percentage of the market willing to pay luxury prices for a luxury machine. But that percentage appears to be dwindling. MORE

Richi Jennings — Your humble blogwatcher is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, spam, and other security topics. He was voted 'Most likely to get up first to sing at karaoke' for 14 years in succession.